July 2011

Brought to you by Axis Flight School at Skydive Arizona in Eloy. Photos by Brianne Thompson. more »

A jumper who had hooked up and packed his new canopy in the evening (reportedly after having “a few beers”) landed from his first jump the next day complaining of a hard opening. Upon inspecting the canopy, his rigger found the slider in this configuration. Fortunately, the jumper received only a few bruised ribs and a sore neck from the opening. more »

Q:

What are the things I should do before handing my rig over to a packer? more »

Jumping at an unfamiliar drop zone can be intimidating, especially to newer skydivers who may have jumped at only one place so far. Jumpers need to approach visiting a new location with caution and planning, whether it is just a weekend jumping out of a Cessna 182 or sharing the skies with hundreds of jumpers at a large boogie. And this caution applies to jumpers of all experience levels. more »

by Doug Garr | D-2791 | New York, New York

It was April 12, 1969. I had turned 20 the previous week and found myself hanging from the strut of a Cessna 206. A sort-of-nerdy guy with horn-rimmed glasses who lived down the hall in my dorm had made several skydives. Though I kept oversleeping and exhaling with relief when bad weather scrubbed my planned jumping weekends, I figured if he could do it, I could. Also, as a sophomore journalism major, I thought it was a good story for my college newspaper. more »

Taya Weiss, D-27874, is an accomplished wingsuit pilot who has an Ivy-League education and founded skydiving outreach organization Raise the Sky. She was instrumental in developing the first official judging system for wingsuit formations and was on the 68-way U.S. Wingsuit Formation Record in 2009. Recently, she and canopy pilot Jessica Edgeington became the first female pair to perform a canopy-wingsuit dock. more »

USPA and its predecessor organizations have always promoted skydiving competition. Then called the Parachute Club of America, USPA began conducting meets in the late ’50s and early ’60s, and the tradition continues today with the annual USPA Nationals and the USPA Collegiate Nationals. But to USPA staff and board members, “competition” means much more than an event. It’s the 205-page Skydiver’s Competition Manual (SCM) of rules and requirements that requires constant updating. more »

Skydive Arizona, one of the world’s busiest drop zones, has tracked its fatalities, injuries and incidents for the past 20 years. The figures have recently been compiled into a comprehensive report, “Learning From the Mistakes of Others: Skydive Arizona Accident Review, 1991 to 2011.” Remarkably, just plain bad luck accounted for less than 5 percent of all incidents—meaning 95 percent of the accidents were preventable. In addition, 75 percent of the skydiving fatalities did not involve any equipment malfunctions (which closely parallels national and international statistics). Furthermore, visiting jumpers were slightly greater than five times more likely to die in a skydiving accident than Skydive Arizona locals. What do these numbers tell us about how to make people safer skydivers? more »